Crypto CEOs to Testify Before House Financial Services Committee

CEOs from six major cryptocurrency companies will testify at a Dec. 8 hearing of the House Financial Services Committee, committee Chair Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) announced Wednesday.

• FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried, Circle’s Jeremy Allaire, Bitfury’s Brian Brooks, Paxos’ Charles Cascarilla, Stellar Development Foundation’s Denelle Dixon and Coinbase’s Alesia Haas will speak at the session entitled “Digital Assets and the Future of Finance: Understanding the Challenges and Benefits of Financial Innovation in the United States.”

• Waters has been an outspoken critic of crypto largely because of its unregulated nature.

• In June, she announced that she was forming a group of Democrat House members to tackle growing concerns about cryptocurrency.

• Bankman-Fried, the CEO of the crypto derivatives exchange FTX, said in September that tighter regulation of crypto exchanges would have positive effects for investors.

• Brooks, who took over as CEO of the mining company Bitfury in November, was the acting comptroller of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the regulator for U.S. national banks, between May 2020 and January 2021. He also had a brief stint as CEO of the crypto exchange Binance’s U.S. arm.

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